Sea and fishing...

The first time i wanted to see the sea in Britanny/Bretagne i could not believe how big the difference between low and high tide there is! At the Black sea coast, there are sometimes 5 cm, here it can be up 5-10 or even 20 meters....I had to walk once more than 5 minutes from the place where the water surface usually is (by high tide) till where it was by low tide.

I have discovered those cute fishermen houses by low tide in south Bretagne, in Saint Michel Chef Chef. They were looking so lonely on the beach, one abandoned one even reminded me of a spider while looking at it from down. Some people were using those hours when the water uncovers clams and other seafood to collect the dinner...

Guérande, the sea salt capital of France/Britanny!

The village Guérande is famous for its sea salt production - still the old-fashioned way: by hand! All over Western Europe if you sometimes buy/have bought salted butter, most of the time the salt inside is from there:-) The salt evaporation ponds surrounding Guérande is where everything takes place under the sky. The salt concentration from the ocean is 35gr/l, in the ponds it goes down to 300gr/l within 15 days!!!

I was very lucky and happy to be there end of August when is the actual harvesting-time. There are 2 salt products: the "gros sel"(heavy grey salt this one stays at the bottom of the pond) and the "fleur du sel"(salt flower = the light one, that stays at the surface). One salt evaporation pond (with a size of 7x10m) usually brings a harvest of 50-100kg "gros sel" and 2-4 kg "fleur du sel"...